Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Path to Creative Connection (A Six-Week Artist's Way Program)

By Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron returns to the spiritual roots of the Artist’s Way in this 6-week Program

Author Julia Cameron changed the way the world thinks about creativity when she first published The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity thirty years ago. Over five million copies later, Cameron now turns her attention to creative prayer, which she believes is a key facet of the creative life. In Seeking Wisdom, a 6 Week Artist’s Way Program, readers, too, will learn to pray.

Tracing her own creative journey, Cameron reveals that prayer led her forward at a time of personal crisis. Unexpectedly, prayer became an indispensable support to her artistic life. The tools she created to save herself in her darkest hour became the tools she would share with the world through The Artist's Way. Seeking Wisdom details the origin of these tools, and by Cameron's example, the central role that prayer plays in sustaining a life as an artist.

In this volume, Cameron shares a mindful collection of prayer practices that open our creative souls. This path takes us beyond traditional religious rituals, welcoming readers regardless of their beliefs and backgrounds. As you journey through each week of the program you’ll explore prayers of petition, gratitude, creativity, and more. Along the way, the three beloved tools of The Artist’s Way—Morning Pages, Artist Dates, and Walks—are refreshed and reintroduced, to provide a proven, grounded framework for growth and development.

Additionally, Cameron introduces a fourth tool, Writing Out Guidance. She believes this powerful practice will greatly aid aspiring artists.

Seeking Wisdom issues an invitation to step further into exciting creative practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250809384

Julia Cameron

Hailed by the New York Times as 'The Queen of Change', Julia Cameron is credited with starting a movement in 1992 that has brought creativity into the mainstream conversation - in the arts, in business, and in everyday life. She is the bestselling author of more than forty books, fiction and nonfiction; a poet, songwriter, filmmaker and playwright. Commonly referred to as 'The Godmother' or 'High Priestess' of creativity, her tools are based in practice, not theory, and she considers herself 'the floor sample of her own toolkit.' The Artist's Way has been translated into forty languages and sold over five million copies to date. www.juliacameronlive.com

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Prayer is talking to God, so the adage goes. That’s simple enough, and yet for many people, prayer is a difficult subject. How do I talk to God? they ask. God and prayer can be loaded words, often associated with an organized religion that we may or may not have broken from. There are as many definitions of God—and prayer—as there are people to define it. In writing this book, which spanned a cold and snowy New Mexico winter, I wrote, and I prayed—and I talked to my friends and colleagues about prayer.

At the core of our relationship to God is our understanding of God. In the six weeks that follow, we will begin by examining the God concept we were raised with. We will explore the possibility that we can convene with a god of our understanding—and then we will experiment with talking to this Higher Power, however we choose to define it.

Speak to God in your own words, a sage advised me four decades ago, as I was struggling in early sobriety. I was raised Catholic, and had spoken of using a formal prayer and saying it on my knees. The advice to be more colloquial found me praying more intimately, and not on my knees.

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Why must people kneel down to pray?

—L. M. MONTGOMERY, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

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Dear God, I’m miserable, I prayed. I’m depressed, angry, and out of sorts. Please help me. I experienced relief at being so plainspoken. I was speaking as an intimate—even as a lover might speak. I found myself feeling assured God had heard my prayer. I was speaking in my own words, speaking with honesty. I found I presumed God’s listening ear. This was, for me, a flier into a prayer that worked. No longer content with formal prayers, I began to pray with greater confidence. After all, I was now candidly talking to God.

I cannot convey to you the relief I felt, knowing that I was being authentic. Where before I had prayed begrudgingly, Thy will be done, dreading the worst, I now began to sense God as truly benevolent. As I trusted to God the secrets of my heart, I sensed that God was accepting all of me. No longer tailoring my prayers to please a distant God, I prayed now with greater ease. As I spoke of all of me, I experienced faith. As I trusted, God felt to me to be trustworthy. Praying with candor, I felt God to be welcoming. As I mustered my courage to speak of difficult things, I felt my difficulties diminish. My newly intimate God took a hand in my affairs. As I prayed for guidance, I was guided. A step at a time, I found myself led.

MY OWN STORY

It was 4 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. I woke with a start and reached for the bedside bottle to drink myself back to sleep. Oh, no! The bottle was empty. I had no alcohol to put me back to sleep and without a drink I would lie there, sleepless. I squinted my eyes shut, willing sleep to come, and with sleep, oblivion. For five days I had been drinking around the clock, unable or unwilling to fight the craving for another drink. Without a drink, my consciousness was painful. My husband had left me four days earlier, exclaiming in disgust, This isn’t going to work, Julia.

The this was my drinking. He hated my drinking and I hated sobriety. He thought I was an alcoholic and I tried not to drink. I watched him cross the living room, cross the patio, cross the lawn. I watched him climb into his sports car and zoom away from the curb. I watched his car disappear down the roadway.

This time you’ve really lost him, my inner voice announced. And then, You need a drink. I drained the last of a bottle of scotch and phoned the liquor store for more.

Could you bring me some J&B, some Jose Cuervo, some Stolichnaya? I asked, careful not to slur. Within fifteen minutes the liquor store fulfilled my request. I thanked the delivery man, tipped him, and poured myself a drink. Had that look on his face been pity? I gulped the drink, not wanting to think about what the man saw: a drunken woman, slurring her thank-yous and pouring herself a drink before he closed the door.

By now it was late morning, early for a normal drinker, late for me. My infant daughter was napping in her crib. My housekeeper viewed me with concern. I took the drink and the drink took another drink. It would go on like this for the better part of a week, until I woke that Wednesday morning to an empty bottle and the chilling realization that the liquor store wouldn’t open for hours.

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The inner voice is something which cannot be described in words. The time when I learnt to recognize this voice was, I may say, the time when I started praying regularly.

—MAHATMA GANDHI

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What can I do? my brain drummed frantically. What can I do?

The answer came to me: call a friend on the East coast. It was later there. Hands shaking, I dialed a number: my friend Claudia. She answered, still sleeping, on the second ring.

Claudia, I blurted. What am I going to do? I thought I was talking about my husband leaving. Claudia thought something else. The child of an alcoholic father, she knew about desperate, booze-fueled phone calls.

I’ll call you back, she said, and the phone went dead.

Oh, my God, I thought frantically, I’ve even lost Claudia. Claudia, who had always been so understanding. Claudia, who—

The phone rang. I jumped to answer it. Claudia? I asked, eager to hear my friend’s warm voice, to be assured we were still friends.

Julia, a cool voice said. Here is a number for you to call. I think you need to talk to another alcoholic.

Claudia! I exclaimed, offended. You don’t really think I’m an alcoholic?!

Well… Claudia said, and that was all.

All right. I’ll call, I told her belligerently.

That was forty-two years ago. As Claudia intuited, I was at my bottom, ready to admit my alcoholism. I needed to talk to another alcoholic. The number she had given me was for a woman named Susan. Susan was an alcoholic.

I’m an alcoholic and a screenwriter, I told this stranger, desperate to hold on to some prestige.

Susan understood.

I’m going to call a friend of mine named Edie. She’ll want to come talk to you. Can you keep from taking a drink until she gets there?

Yes, I said. And so I was launched into sobriety.

I’ve often thought about the chain of events that fateful day. I happened to call Claudia, who happened to have a number for Susan. And so, I happened to get sober. The chain of events was miraculous. Did I need further proof of a merciful God? When I was ready to surrender, a Higher Power caught me by the hand. This Higher Power was compassionate, merciful. I was saved, rescued, yanked back from the brink. Over time I’ve come to see—and believe—in a god of mercy. How else to explain my fate?

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ON JANUARY 25, 1978, I was advised that if I wanted to stay sober, I should pray. I wanted to stay sober, there was no mistaking that, but pray? I’d had sixteen years of Catholic education and I often joked that it was the greased slide to atheism. Prayer was something Catholics did, and something that I did without. I was rebellious; agnostic if not atheist.

"But surely you must believe in something!" I was told.

Cornered, I confessed, Well, I do believe in something. I believe in a line from Dylan Thomas: ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’ Creative energy was what I believed in—all that I believed in.

Great, I was told. One woman announced, I pray to sunspots. Another chimed in, I pray to Mick Jagger. Clearly my line from Dylan Thomas fit right in. I could believe in anything.

As long as it isn’t yourself, I was told.

And so, wanting desperately to stay sober, I tried prayer—what I thought of as secular prayer. I talked to the Universe.

It’s very straightforward, I was counseled. The day will come when you will have no defense against the first drink. Your defense must come from a Higher Power.

Surely, I thought, enough self-knowledge would be a defense. I knew I was an alcoholic and I knew I couldn’t drink.

Not good enough, I was told. If you really are an alcoholic, you will have a curious mental blank spot. You will be unable to recall to mind with sufficient clarity the consequences of taking the first drink.

Experienced for a decade with blackout drinking, times when my memory was simply erased, I was ready to believe in a curious mental blank spot. I thought of it as a sober blackout, and the prospect of its striking me—from out of the blue—terrified me. I could avoid blackouts by not drinking, but how could I avoid a curious mental blank spot? It could strike me stone-cold sober. There had to be some defense, some help, some rescue.

The answer is simple, I was told.

Simple?

Prayer.

Prayer? I hate prayer. I’m bad at it.

Pray anyhow.

But— I rebelled at the thought.

But nothing. Ask Him in the morning to give you another day of sobriety. At night, thank Him.

I suppose I have to get on my knees? I was sarcastic.

I do.

Terrified of drinking again, I tried to be open-minded about prayer. While I didn’t get on my knees, I did send up telegrams to God.

Please give me sobriety, and Thank you for my sobriety today, I managed to mumble. My feeble efforts were rewarded. No curious mental blank spots attacked me. A day at a time, a prayer at a time, I was granted immunity from drinking. Praying daily as instructed, I was struck sober as promised. After years of blackout drinking, this was miraculous.

Sober, I upped the ante. If it’s a choice between sobriety and creativity, I don’t know that I choose sobriety, I protested.

But there is no choice, I was told. Without sobriety, there will be no creativity.

Still, I was frightened. To me, drinking and writing went together like, well, scotch and soda. But I had to admit something good was afoot. Praying as directed, my tangled drinker’s life began to straighten out.

Try letting the Higher Power write through you, I was directed.

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If God has given us life, He is capable of any other thing.

—LAILAH GIFTY AKITA

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What if it doesn’t want to? I asked. But I tried it. Like my life, my prose straightened out. I went from a tortured writer’s life to a life in which I wrote with increased ease and joy. I was rewarded with a flow of ideas and words. Freed from my ego’s demand that it be brilliant, my writing became straightforward. Increasingly honest, it became more powerful. Words followed words with grace. I went from writing articles to writing entire books. When I prayed for guidance about what to write next, I was led well and carefully, topic to topic. Over time, I amassed a body of work.

As days became months, became years, I came to trust my Higher Power. Prayer became more natural—a conversation with a supportive Higher Power, not merely a necessity. My rebellious nature was tamed. My writer’s—and my drinker’s—prayers were answered. I’ve been sober and productive ever since.

THE ARTIST’S WAY

An early gift of my sobriety was an unexpected calling to teach. Build with me and do with me what you will, I was told to pray by my newly acquired sober friends. I prayed, but I was afraid to pray, fearing what God might make of me. I wanted to stay a writer. Help others, I was told, and God will help you. And so I reached out to another blocked writer. Helping him to write, I myself wrote, and more freely.

I knew that I could help artists become unblocked—and I thought I was helping just a few people, those artists in my inner circle who were struggling to be productive and open as they worked. These early lessons became my book The Artist’s Way, which, at the time of this writing, has unblocked five million people around the globe. The creative force—my Higher Power—was working through me. It works through me still.

I have been teaching creative unblocking ever since—four decades now. And one of the core concepts of my teaching is that creativity and spirituality are inextricably linked. Creativity is a path to spirituality—and spirituality is a path to creativity. As we deepen our creativity, we deepen our spirituality. As we deepen our spirituality, we deepen our creativity.

This belief grew out of getting sober—and having to believe in something. Desperate, and pushed to define what I believed in, I settled on my line from Dylan Thomas. As I relied on this Higher Power—the force that through the green fuse drives the flower—it became clear to me that God was the great artist. When we say creator, it is a literal term for artist—and so I began to believe that if I pursued my artistry, I would be drawn closer to God. If I pursued knowing the creator, I would have more freedom to create. As I allowed the creator to create through me, it became clear to me that I was in fact a co-creator. By forging a new relationship with the Higher Power, I unblocked myself creatively. At the time, it was an unexpected gift of surrendering to living a sober life. It would become the root of my life’s work, and a gift I would go on to share with many, many others.

Praying to God in my own words, praying regularly, I came to a different experience of the world. No longer a hostile and forbidding place, it became, instead, benevolent. No longer dreading the future, I came to look forward to it. I prayed, Thy will be done, coming to trust that God’s will was gentle rather than harsh, happy rather than sad, welcoming rather than forbidding.

A word at a time, prayer was leading me to optimism. As I spoke of my secrets, of my dreams and hopes, I heard, You will be prospered—and I came to believe it. It was as if when I took a step toward God, God took a step toward me. We drew closer, ever closer, and our proximity bred faith. When I risked disclosure toward God, God disclosed himself to me. I sensed God’s presence, and God’s nature—all loving. Where previously I believed in an authoritarian God, I found my God concept altering. I began to sense a God of wonder. Gazing at a full moon, I heard myself breathe, I love you, addressing God—the moon’s maker. I found God in beauty, and beauty was all around me. The willow tree, the maple, the blue spruce—I saw God in nature. The deer, the fox, the bear—his creatures were varied and miraculous. Spotting a raccoon, I marveled at its antic grace. The hawk, the dove, the raven—my spirit took wings as well. I began to pray from gratitude. Thank you, God, for the sunset. Thank you, God, for the evening star. Addressing God with gratitude, I had a sense of the miraculous. I felt grace. My mood lifted. There was so much to be grateful for—my health, my home, my friends. I could list dozens of reasons to be grateful. My hair, my skin, my limbs. I was grateful to be alive and breathing, grateful to be at prayer.

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For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.

—WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

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I found myself feeling a sense of the presence of God. The more I prayed, the stronger the presence felt. I thought of the Carmelite nuns who spend their entire day at prayer. It is often remarked that nuns seem happy, and I began to have a sense of why. I began to sense that conscious contact could yield many things—a sense of well-being chief among them. Mystics report a sense of ecstasy. Humbler than mystics, regular practitioners of prayer report a sense of satisfaction with their lives as they unfold. Pausing throughout their day to say thy will be done, they feel the comfort of aligning their lives with God’s will for them. Happiness is the result.

My teaching taught me that this was not only true for me, but that it was true for other people as well. We are all creative. We can all call on help from the great creator, and we can all connect to the creator by practicing our creativity. I have often noted that creativity is God’s gift to us—and using our creativity is our gift back to God. Using our creativity is a valid and powerful path to God, and as we explore and deepen our creativity, we explore and deepen our relationship with a Higher Power—whether we call that God, the force, or sunspots.

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AS YOU BEGIN your own journey into talking to God, I ask you to experiment with open-mindedness. If the word God is uncomfortable for you, do not let that be a block to greater support and connection. After all, a line from Dylan Thomas worked for me. Sunspots worked for my friend. Mick Jagger worked for another. Many of my students have successfully replaced the word God with the phrase Good Orderly Direction. For the purposes of this book, I will use the word God. Do not let semantics scare you off. We will work on defining a God that works for you, and we will explore the creative art of prayer: a completely individual